"The Official Portrait of Miss InDiana"

Friday, May 30, 2008

Penny Bigelow, Washington Township School Board taxpayer advocate, sent us this perspective about what a BILLION means. Thanks, Penny.

What is a BILLION??The next time you hear a politician use the word 'billion' in a casual manner, think about whether you want the 'politicians' spending YOUR tax money.A billion is a difficult number to comprehend, but one advertising agency did a good job of putting that figure into some perspective in one of its releases.

A. A billion seconds ago it was 1959.

B. A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive.

C. A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age.

D. A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet.

E. A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes, at the rate our government is spending it.While this thought is still fresh in our brain, let's take a look at New Orleans It's amazing what you can learn with some simple division

Louisiana Senator, Mary Landrieu (D), is asking the Congress for $250 BILLION to rebuild New Orleans. Interesting number, what does it mean?

A. Well, if you are one of 484,674 residents of New Orleans (every man, woman, child), you each get $516,528.

B. Or, if you have one of the 188,251 homes in New Orleans , your home gets $1,329,787.

C. Or, if f you are a family of four, your family gets $2,066,012.Washington, D.C .. HELLO!!! ... Are all y our calculators broken??

Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago,and our nation was the most prosperous in the world.We had absolutely no national debt, had the largest middle class in the world, and Mom stayed home to raise the kids.What happened?..... Can you spell 'politicians ?????'And I still have to 'press 1' for English.I hope this goes around THEUSA at least 100 times

3 comments:

Fantastic article. A billion dollars is a huge amount of money. Another way to put it into perspective is, if you could make a million dollars a day, it would take you two years and nine months to save a billion dollars, assuming you save every penny! Most people will never in their lives have a million dollars. I find it ludicrous that, despite what it collects from taxes every year, the U.S. government still needs to borrow trillions of dollars more. This is nothing but corruption in carnate and it needs to be stopped as soon as possible. I wholeheartedly support the Fair tax. It's not just tax reform, it's the first step in federal legislative reform.

Since we don't teach critical thinking in our educational system** I always remind people to "do the math".

Anytime the Federal, State or Local government is talking about spending some amount of money divide

by 113.5 million households in the United States2.4 million households in Indiana (6 million people total) [2003 figures]352,000 households (215,000 families)representing 876,000 people in Marion County [2007 est]

So, take the recently passed "farm bill", which certainly still includes paying large farming corporations subsidies and such, often to NOT grow things. $307 billion (over 5 years) or $2,763 per U.S. household ... not for national defense, education or running the government ... the "farm bill".

The United States, out of the whole world, is the country deepest in debt. Didn't have to be that way.

**Hopefully we don't still tech Keynesian economics too - but they did last I knew) ...

I tried the federal tax issue from a different perspective. The question was what services do I get for the money. I dont fly (FAA is a joke anyway), no subsidies or grants. I rarely travel, an recieve no disabilities or aid checks. Dnot pay into SSIbecause of a pension (your money anyways). So, what is it I pay for.